Ideas?

I have no idea what to get John for Christmas. he's not giving me any ideas...so if you have any fabulous thoughts about what he'd LOVE to get, let me know. I'm so stuck here!

resolution for the week

I will not allow job stress to spill outside of my office. I resolve to keep a lid on negativity at work and just keep plowing through things as though I were on our 4-wheeler. This is not only my resolution but a heart felt prayer.

Here I go - I'll let you know how this works out for me.

Ode to the Four Wheeler with Plow

Oh Four-Wheeler how I love you,

You make shoveling an easy task to do.

Instead of causing my arms and back to ache.

I save time and can go skate on the lake.

Those eight inches of new snow are nice,

And I really do like the pretty way it shines.

But the best part of all for John and me,

Is that we don't have to hurt and get the job doneie. ( or something)

Yay for John and his decision to buy the four wheeler with the plow - now that I know how to drive it, the driveway is a cinch to plow and we're done in no time. Plus it's a great excuse to snuggle!

Black Friday

The Longs = 0

Wal Mart = 500

wow - I'm pretty sure I came, I saw and I never again will be at Wal-Mart at 5:00 a.m. on Black Friday.

Corrie ten Boom

In May 1942, a well-dressed woman came to the Ten Boom door with a suitcase in hand. Nervously, she told Ten Boom that she was a Jew and that her husband had been arrested several months before, and her son had gone into hiding. Occupation authorities had recently visited her, and she was too fearful to return home. After hearing about how they had helped the Weils, she asked if she might stay with them, and Corrie ten Boom's father readily agreed. A devoted reader of the Old Testament, Casper ten Boom believed Jews were indeed "the chosen," and told the woman, "In this household, God's people are always welcome."

Thus began "the hiding place", or "de schuilplaats", as it was known in Dutch (also known as "de BéJé", with BéJé being derived from the name of the street the house was in, the Barteljorisstraat). Ten Boom and her sister began taking in refugees, some of whom were Jews, others members of the resistance movement sought by the Gestapo and its Dutch counterpart. There were several extra rooms in their house, but food was scarce due to wartime shortages. Every non-Jewish Dutch person had received a ration card with which they could procure weekly coupons to buy food.

Corrie knew many in Haarlem, thanks to her charitable work, and remembered a couple who had a developmentally disabled daughter. For about twenty years, Corrie ten Boom had run a special church service program for such children, and knew the family. The father was a civil servant who was by then in charge of the local ration-card office. She went to his house unannounced one evening, and he seemed to know why. When he asked how many ration cards she needed, "I opened my mouth to say, 'Five,'" Ten Boom wrote in The Hiding Place. "But the number that unexpectedly and astonishingly came out instead was. 'One hundred.'"

The Germans arrested the entire Ten Boom family on February 28, 1944 at around 12:30 with the help of a Dutch informant. They were sent first to Scheveningen prison (where her father died ten days after his capture), then to the Vught political concentration camp (both in the Netherlands), and finally to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany in September 1944, where Corrie's sister Betsie died. Before she died she told Corrie, "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still." Corrie was released on Christmas Day of December 1944.^[2] In the movie The Hiding Place, Ten Boom narrates the section on her release from camp, saying that she later learned that her release had been a clerical error. The women prisoners her age in the camp were killed the week following her release. She said, "God does not have problems. Only plans."

Awana Fun

Last night was the carnival at Awana - I was in charge of the ring toss, and John got the pleasure of having little kids throw wet sponges... at his face...fun for him! The kids would come over and tell me that they got to throw the sponges at him, and I was a bit jealous! :)

We had a great time - the Cubbies (3-5 yr olds) are hilarious and quickly figured out that didn't have to "toss" the ring, they could just walk right up to the post and drop them on. I wasn't too bossy about it - we were there to have fun. I laughed pretty hard though when they'd rejoice over all of the rings landing on the post!

We got away pretty easy last night - only one casualty - a tooth!

Oops...

Oops is right.

Once again I was in a hurry and got things all messed up and didn’t realize how bad it was until I was far enough away from the situation that going back would be a pain.

I am the “voice” of my work. I am the person that greets you when you call, lists all the people and extensions and invites you to leave a message at the tone. Today I changed the message because of office closings coming up. I was reading my script (that I have mostly memorized) and got almost to the end and said “if you know the extension of the person you are cleaning for…cleaning for?...oh crap” and then I rerecorded a message without the “crap” and went about my merry way.

I’d been at lunch for about 10 minutes when my cell phone started to ring. My friend Marlene from work called and said that I should call and listen to the voice mail at work. I knew immediately what had happened…I hadn’t pushed the “1 for ‘yes’ I would like to save the message I’d just recorded.”

The funny thing is that in the afternoons our phone hardly rings…but in the 30 minutes that the “crap” message was on the phone we had 4 messages telling us all about how shocked these people were to hear that on a message.

Oops…